Dats on a Server

Since Dat is a distributed (peer-to-peer) data sharing tool, a computer must be actively sharing a dat for it to be available. If you're sharing files over Dat, you might want to set up a dedicated server that re-hosts your dat. This means that it'll still be available even after you turn off your personal computer.

Running Dat on a server can also be used for live backups. As long as you are connected to your server and syncing changes, your server can backup all of your content history - allowing you to view old content later.

Short Instructions

We have built a simple tool to host multiple dats using the commandline. The tool is called hypercored. Hypercored reads a file that contains all of the dats that you want to share.

Install it on your server, create a feeds file with dats separated by newlines, and run hypercored.

That's great! Now all of the dats in feeds will be downloaded and re-hosted. However, it's running in the foreground -- you probably want to use a process manager to run and watch the process so that it never goes down.

Run it Forever

We recommend using lil-pids and add-to-systemd for long-term dat hosting from a linux server.